


Any Moment You Choose

by still_lycoris



Category: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) - Fandom
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hero Worship, referenced character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 01:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8729335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: Raven's nervous enough about returning to the mansion without acquiring an eager shadow ...





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nokomis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/gifts).



Raven looked at her new bedroom and wondered if she had made a terrible mistake.

It was in the same place that her bedroom had been all those years ago, although not the same room. It couldn’t be, of course, not after what had happened to the mansion – and yet in many ways, it felt exactly the same. She felt like she was standing in the same room, looking out of the same window, about to sit on the same bed.

Was she ready for this? Was this really _right_ for her? After all this time, was she just going backwards, back to something that she had left behind because she didn’t want it any more?

“Not backwards,” Charles said quietly from behind her. “You've just returned to somewhere that you’ve been in before to make it work in a different way..”

“Reading my mind, Charles?”

“Only a little.”

He moved beside her, looking up with a smile. Raven still found the wheelchair strange, even though she knew he'd been in it for around twenty years now (well, bar a break in the middle.) She always remembered Charles as taller than her, somehow. Tall and with thick brown hair …

“Oh, don't,” Charles said with a shudder. “Everyone keeps looking at me and thinking about it, it's driving me mad. It was bad enough when Hank found the first grey hairs!”

“Serves you right for reading my mind,” Raven said. To her slight surprise, her voice came out teasing, almost as it had been so long ago. Charles smiled at her warmly, obviously happy. Raven knew he was thrilled that she was staying, although he was trying to behave very calmly about it. He had promised her that things wouldn't be the same and she knew logically it was true – but would he really be able to avoid seeing her as little Raven? The first time they disagreed over training the students, would they really manage to not return to all their old habits?

If Charles was still reading her mind, he showed no sign of it. He didn’t answer her thoughts except to keep smiling. 

“Do you have any stuff that you want to pick up?” he asked.

“Yes, I have a few things.”

“Perhaps Kurt could take you? I think he would be glad to give you a hand and then you could be back quickly.”

“Yeah,” Raven said with a small shrug. “Sounds good.”

Charles turned to go, then looked back at her and reached out a hand, touching hers very gently. He didn't offer any reassurances, any more words. Just a gentle touch before he left her alone again.

It was more reassuring than any words could have been. Charles was different, that she knew. They were _all_ different, for better and for worse. Charles was no longer the confident youth, she was no longer playing the little sister. It wouldn’t be easy but Raven felt the renewed confidence that they would make it work, somehow.

Perhaps this room only felt so similar to her old one because she hadn’t done anything to it yet. Perhaps she would get it repainted. Charles only allowed the students to pin up posters or hang paintings but she was staff, she had a little more leeway. She didn’t want to do anything _very_ dramatic ... but perhaps a slightly richer colour for the walls?

“Um, hello?”

She turned. Nightcrawler was at the door, smiling that eager little smile at her.

“Professor Xavier said that I should come to you? That you needed me to take you to pick up your stuff?”

“Yeah.”

Not that she had very much stuff to pick up. She had a small, dirty apartment that she didn’t spend very much time in. Too busy travelling, too busy trying to help those that were in need, pulling them out of trouble. People like Nightcrawler here. Or Kurt, she supposed she should call him. Nightcrawler was his circus name – or now, the name he would use as an X-Man.

“You know where you’re going?”

“Professor Xavier showed me a map,” Kurt said cheerfully. “I think I know the quickest way.”

He offered his arm and she took it. The world folded in on itself, turning from colour to black and white, then back again as they landed, then almost immediately teleported again. Kurt was more confident than he had been when they first met. Then, he had been nervy, always pausing for a long moment to look around before taking her onwards. 

What a difference a few weeks and a life or death battle made.

“Is this the building?”

“Yes it is,” she said. “I’ll need you to teleport me inside, my key is ... lost.”

The disadvantage of returning to her natural form, to wearing that natural form the way Erik had told her to. Even her superior scaly form did not come with pockets. She supposed she’d left the key behind in the mansion when things had exploded or maybe in the military base when they’d changed into the flight suits. She didn’t know. It didn’t really matter.

“Just take me to the door,” Kurt said happily.

People stared at them as they walked inside, a mixture of curiosity and hostility. Raven made sure not to look to them. She knew how to deal with people like this – although she was also aware that things were worse now than they had been for a while. The destruction and deaths had not helped the mutant cause, not one little bit. Charles had done his best, of course, speaking to people, trying to reason and Moira had supported them all to the hilt but Raven knew that everything she had seen in the last ten years would be heightened now.

Of course, that was why Charles had given her a job.

Kurt huddled close to her as she led him to the door. He was clearly uneasy and Raven wanted to reassure him.

“Hey. They’re just guys. You helped fight a so-called God, I’m pretty sure you could take them without my help.”

He blinked at her, then gave her a beaming smile, displaying all of his slightly sharp teeth.

“You really think so?

“Sure,” Raven said. “You’re a tough guy. Bit of training, you’ll be one of the best, I’m sure.”

Kurt practically sparkled at her. Raven hadn’t quite expected her compliment to be so rapturously received but she supposed that it couldn’t hurt to have made him so cheerful, particularly as he had to stand around and watch her gather together things that probably didn’t match the heroic persona that she had.

She didn’t quite realise what she’d started.

*

Hank designed her fighting costume for her.

Raven couldn’t help smiling to herself when she saw it. It was very different from the first suit that he’d ever made for her. For all of them. For a moment, she was back twenty years ago, standing with the others, looking at the suits that Hank had designed, listening to Alex complaining, Charles reassuring, watching Erik out of the corner of her eye.

“No more yellow?”

“I didn’t think it quite the aesthetic the X-Men want to achieve.”

Hank said it with a deadpan tone and she couldn’t help laughing. It was strange to be around Hank again. For a long time, she’d made him into a symbol in her mind, a symbol of various things. Of people that let you down, that didn’t appreciate you, that didn’t understand and never could. Of how everybody always let you down, how she was _better_ than them and would rise above, just the way that Erik always said and crush the fools underfoot.

She knew better now. Hank had hurt her, hurt her badly but he wasn’t evil. He had hurt himself more than he had hurt her in the end and he knew it. And now, now he was somebody else entirely, a new and different Hank and there was no point thinking of him as the child he had been twenty years back. But she still wasn’t sure just how easy it would be to live with him. To stay and work with someone whom she had liked so much and who had hurt her so much.

“I’m glad you agreed to stay,” Hank said quietly, cutting into her thoughts. “I think you’ll be good for the school.”

“Oh sure,” Raven said. “But will it be good for me?”

Hank shrugged, an odd gesture in the large blue creature that he was now. 

“Well, you can always leave if it’s awful,” he said. “You know that Charles won’t hold onto you if you’re unhappy. But I think ... I think he’s right. You can do real good here. You can bring in something that we’ve never had before.”

He smiled, showing his fangs. Raven couldn’t help smiling back. 

An odd noise made her quickly twist around, half-prepared for battle. Of course, it was nothing dangerous. It was Kurt teleporting into the room, smiling brightly at her.

“Hello Mystique!”

“Um, hi,” she said rather blankly.

“How are you?”

She heard Hank made a sound behind her that sounded remarkably like a snicker.

“I’m ... fine. Did you want something, Kurt?”

“Oh, you know, just to see what you were doing,” Kurt said perkily.

This time, Hank _definitely_ snickered. Raven turned to glower at him but he was apparently very busy examining something on his workbench and didn’t meet her eye.

“Hank and I are discussing my suit,” she said.

“Oh yes? May I see?”

“Um ... sure ... ”

Why was Hank still sniggering? She was going to kick him so hard when Kurt wasn’t there. He was admiring her suit, beaming.

“It is very good, ja? You will be amazingly strong.”

“Well, I’m already strong, it will just protect me. Now, I need to try it on ... ”

She paused. Kurt was still standing there, apparently quite happy to watch her put the suit on. Which probably made sense, she was already naked, it wasn’t like he was going to see anything he hadn’t already seen but she really rather wanted him to go away and he appeared to be planning to stay standing there.

“So would you go away?”

Kurt blinked and his smile wavered slightly.

“Oh. Of course. I ... sorry.”

He teleported away, leaving behind an odd smell. Raven turned to glower at Hank, who laughed openly.

“He likes you,” he said, grinning.

“What do you mean?” Raven asked, beginning to put the suit on.

“Just that. It’s cute. It’ll be nice for Charles to have the hero-worshipping directed at someone else.”

“I do _not_ want to be hero-worshipped!” Raven snapped.

“Sorry. That’s the disadvantage of being a hero. The worship comes too. And even if you ignore everything else you’ve done, you’re a hero to them just for existing. For showing that you can survive. They’re going to love you, Raven.”

“Do they love you?”

She noticed the way Hank’s fur rippled and realised it was his beast-form’s equivalent of an embarrassed blush. She couldn’t help grinning.

“Hank McCoy, hero-worshipped. Didn’t I once say to you, mutant and proud?”

“Oh shut up,” Hank said and it was so unlike the Hank that she’d once known that she suddenly able to put the past aside in her head. It was going to be fine between her and Hank. She could work with this man, she could get to know him. It was going to be fine.

“That’s not setting right on the shoulders, is it?” Hank said, abruptly all business again. “Okay, let’s see ... if I bring it in here a little ... ”

Raven stood still and let him fuss. She didn’t think it was that bad. In fact, she found that she liked the suit a lot. It felt almost like a second skin.

Like something that she could be comfortable with.

*

Over the next few days, Kurt kept popping up around her. Usually literally. Raven would be working on something and then suddenly, Kurt would be behind her, head on one side, brightly smiling, asking what she was doing and if she needed any help. 

Raven was used to odd people. She’d spent twenty years living in strange places, avoiding forming any type of connection, rescuing other mutants and then never seeing them again. She had learned to cope with anger, indifference, frantic need without it really affecting her. She had thought that she was used to … well, everything.

But this level of … well, as Hank had put it, _hero-worship_ was not something that she was accustomed to at all. It was ridiculous. It was annoying.

“It could be worse,” Erik said when she complained to him. “You could have Peter. Actually, I suppose you do have Peter too, he seems to like you almost as much as he likes me.”

Raven had to bite her tongue. She had told Peter more than once that he really needed to tell Erik the truth but Peter was procrastinating in favour of following Erik around, almost in the same way that Kurt was following her.

She wasn't sure what she thought of that comparison.

“I like Peter,” she said instead.

“He's crazy,” Erik said. “I don't understand why he wants to talk to me all the time. He could be talking to Charles. He's staying here, isn't he?”

“Maybe he sees something he’s interested in,” Raven said and then, teasingly. “There's no accounting for taste!”

Erik smiled at her. It was only a shadow of the smile that he'd once been able to direct her way. He wasn't broken but he was bruised almost beyond recognition and Raven thought it was almost a miracle that they'd managed to fix him up this much. He still struggled with nightmares and whenever he had them, every bit of metal in the house shook. He had spent the first few days following Charles around like a lost puppy and although he was more confident now, Raven knew he was a long way from the man she'd once admired so much.

“As I said, he is crazy,” Erik was saying, shrugging his shoulders. “And seems to want me to be very interested in music. He keeps asking me to put his headphones on and then playing me some sort of dreadful noise and hoping that I’ll like it.”

Raven had to conceal a giggle. 

“Well, at least he's trying to find something you can have a conversation about,” she said. “Kurt just … appears and asks what I'm doing and watches me doing it!”

“He wants to know you and doesn't know how,” Erik said with a small shrug. “You saved his life and changed his world. He sees you rather like everybody else sees Charles.”

Raven wondered if Erik included himself in that “everybody else.” She decided it would be better not to ask. Erik's relationship with Charles was almost as complicated as her own.

“Well, I'm not Charles and I don't like it. I keep telling people that I'm not a hero. Why does no one believe it?”

“What does it mean to be a hero?” Erik said and he sounded a little more like the Erik she'd once known now, commanding, putting forth something that he considered to be fact and absolutely confident in that. “You're a hero whether you like it or not, Mystique. At least you know that you aren't perfect. Just don't break Kurt's heart. He's not much more than a child.”

His lips twisted very slightly at the last and Raven put her hand on his arm, knowing he was thinking of his little girl. She knew that Peter could not replace that family but she also knew that Peter would be a little salve on a painful wound, better than nothing. She would have to find him later and give him an encouraging pep talk. And possibly a kick up the backside.

“I promise not to break him,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “Don't you break Peter.”

“ _Nobody_ can break that brat,” Erik said, shaking his head.

“Break who? What brat? Who's a brat? You talkin' about Scott? Betcha talking about Scott,.”

Peter had appeared out of nowhere in the way that he did. He was still building up the muscles in his leg but he was already running again. He looked so eager, beaming at Erik as though Erik would beam back. Erik gave a weary sigh.

“Is it any of your business, Peter?”

“Just curious. Hey Raven. How's it hanging?”

“Fine,” Raven said, grinning. “I'll just go, get on with things. Anything you should be getting on with, Peter?”

She dug him in the ribs before walking away, hoping Peter would take the hint, although she doubted it. Peter seemed to have inherited his father's stubbornness.

The sound of Kurt's abrupt arrival no longer made her jump. He smiled at her, that shy little smile that he had.

“Hello, Raven. How … how is it going?”

He seemed pleased that he was picking up on the way the others spoke. Raven couldn't help smiling.

“Fine,” she said. “Everything is going well. The training room is nearly set up. Do you think you're ready?”

“I don't know,” Kurt said with a small shrug. “I … I will try not to disappoint you.”

He looked so hopeful, so eager. Raven looked at him and suddenly felt all right with that. She might disappoint him in the future – anybody you hero-worshipped would let you down in the end, that was the nature of it. But perhaps through that, she could become something better to Kurt. She could be a guide.

Maybe even a friend.

“If you do your best, I know you won't,” she said with a smile. “That's all any of us can do, Kurt.”

Kurt beamed at her and Raven smiled warmly back. The world had changed again. Her world had changed.

Whatever the new world was, she was looking forward to exploring it.

And she would not be alone.


End file.
